The biggest failure of global business: Apple

A trillion market cap is pretty impressive for a company that only sells to Americans. It’s not just the 8.5% global market share for computers that is pathetic. Nor the equally laughable share of global smartphones. Android is the defacto standard, iOS is a joke. Yet for people living in Callifornia or New York (and them alone) it is important. And they are the people writing in tech magazines and blogs, they are the people in the media. They are the ones keeping the stock price so high even though it makes absolutely no sense. Never did.

It takes a lot to make a truly global company. Google develops its products in local languages, it makes tools we all rely on. Really rely on, not fancy toys. Things you can’t live without anymore. HP has local support. You know real support, real sales people, real local offices in every country in the world. Apple? Not even close! And they have never seemed to care. Too big to fail, too close to an all American symbol.

This does in fact present a real problem to users. With such a small loyal user base Apple doesn’t need to care about backwards compatibility, to take just one example. Unlike Windows or Android, they can just leave old users in the dust and demand you upgrade. It is amazing that I can still use a computer with Windows 95 for a lot of things (even running DOS applications!) or and old Android 4 phone. It will connect and work for most things unlike Apple devices. This is the real world of real responsibility. When major corporations, governments and institutions around the world rely on you, that is what you do, you care about connections and standards. You talk to other companies, you collaborate, you commit.

Not Apple. Despite popular perceptions, Apple doesn’t actually innovate. At all. They are great at marketing. Design maybe. Buying companies and tweaking stuff to their spec. Innovation? Not really. Not at all. If we talk purely tech they have nothing. The very public and obvious failures of their Maps app or Siri or anything that demands you to – well – actually work seriously on something, they simply can’t do it.

It’s a one horse pony. For a single market. And it’s time we all started treating it as such.

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Like most of my rantings and raving, this article first appeared in my personal blog. Hey, it's better than depression when in a global pandemic, "better out than in" like Shrek says.